[Anthony]

Posted by Sashas Jewels

In the modern age of technology we live in, it is being established that you can run a successful advertising and marketing campaign for your business using one of the many social networking websites.

What is a social networking site and how does the advertising campaign work?

Two examples of social networking sites are “Myspace” and “Facebook”

These social networking sites were innovative ideas and originally designed so that anyone could have their own little piece of the internet where they could post pictures, write blogs and keep in touch with family and friends.

Many companies are now using these sites to create company profiles advertising their good’s, they add “friends” at random in the hope of building up a network of potential clientele.

I personally have used both Myspace and Facebook to generate sales leads and can speak of the success in marketing your products in this way.

Take a look at these two links on Myspace to get an idea of the types of profiles that businesses are creating:-

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=776 57554
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=141 867073

Notice the amount of “friends” they have, these are not genuine friends but acquaintances they have added at random that present a possible business alliance.

Not only can you design a jazzy profile on Myspace with slideshows and pictures of products to promote them but you can write blogs and post bulletins, which creates a “real time” update to your potential customers. A bulletin is simply a message that gets sent to all of your "friends" which is on a bulletin board on their personal profile dashboard.

Some html knowledge to use Myspace is a bonus when building a profile but it’s not a necessity.

Facebook is a little more complex to use and as a general rule you have to be a member to view profiles, groups and pages.

Firstly a profile is created and then you can create groups and pages to market your products. I’ve posted a link below to a user that has created a group however you will need to be a member to view this one.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8608172181

The facebook user then adds friends to their profile and sends an invite to join the group. From there they can post bulletins, there is a discussion board and they can bulk email updates to members.

A page is similar to that of a group however “friends” are asked to become a fan, below is an example of a page created.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Epiphone-Guitars-30-Buy-at-Wholesale-prices/30037680056?ref=s

These are just two examples of the many social networking sites out there at the moment, others include, bebo, WAYN and Friendster, in fact there are over 350 social networking sites on the world wide web.

Remember it doesn’t have to be a physical product you are trying to promote, it can be a wholesale list or a service such as web design, have a browse of the “friends” on the links above to see more profiles and you will see that it’s simply an open opportunity to have another piece of the web to promote whatever it is that you sell.

Thank you